Freyja's Daughter

by Rachel Pudelek

  “And why is it okay for them to know about you?” I said.

  We crested the top of the cliff. Green low-lying bushes covered the flat terrain and blue ocean framed the horizon.

  “We’ve recently started sending out a call to all Wilds. We figure only those answering that call would ask for a private boat ride to a remote island. Plus, Caleb told us the billing address for your sister’s credit card and we knew there was a Wild group in that area. Though, I’d expected you to be succubi, not huldra.” She brushed her hair from her shoulder, but the wind at our backs proved her effort worthless.

  I stopped. “This call you’ve started sending out. Does it involve attacking and abducting Wilds?”

  Lines crinkled Gabrielle’s forehead. “We would never.”

  I peered at her thigh. No tattoo. No numbers.

  “Are you building an army against the Hunters?” I hadn’t meant to get to business so soon. I’d planned to use a little more finesse, but my concern for my sister grew with each passing moment.

  “The Chumash people have always known about us,” she continued answering my earlier questions as though I hadn’t asked the latter. “They gave us safe haven when the Hunters rounded everybody up and tattooed them with numbers. We agreed to protect their island from those who would try to rape it for profit, and they kept our secret.”

  “How have you protected it?” I asked.

  “Well, technically we don’t protect the Chumash people anymore. Their descendants left the island for jobs and the elders died off. But we still look after the island. When rich tycoons came out for a visit, to see how much money they could make from the land, my foremothers created horrid storms to scare them away, made them think the island was unsafe and uninhabitable. Now we only cause the nearby seas to be choppy and the wind fairly extreme to keep tourists from visiting year around.”

  She started walking again. I kept pace with her.

  “And as far as your army question, we can discuss that after you’ve had a chance to rest.”

  “So it’s true. You don’t answer to Hunters?” A week ago the news would have shocked me, and I’d think it sounded nice, but nothing more. Now it had me thinking that there was another way to live.

  “That’s our house up there.” She pointed to what looked like a blurry mirage in the distance. “No we don’t answer to them. Not at all. You know, the last Chumash wise woman foretold of your kind,” she said matter-of-factly, as if every Wild had a medicine woman giving us our future forecast.

  When I didn’t answer, she paused to examine me until her gaze rested on my face again. “She’d said a tree woman would find the sea women—us. That the tree woman would begin a war to release our sisters from bondage.”

  Chills worked their way through me. Huldra may not have a medicine woman foretelling the future, but I knew the sound of prophecy when I heard it. And this prophecy involved me.

  Thirteen

  My legs wobbled. My stomach grumbled. Travel exhaustion wore me thin. Sleep deprivation, worry, and hours of drive time combined with hours in a boat seemed to do that. And my heart ached a little more with each passing hour that Shawna spent away from our family. The culmination weakened me. So Gabrielle’s words didn’t have to burrow too deep to hit a nerve.

  How could I start a war when the mermaids were the ones building an army? I looked out over the island and saw no signs of Wilds training to fight. I saw no signs of Wilds at all.

  “I don’t have long to stay,” I said, wishing Caleb were still near the shore so I could get my information and leave this oversized bathtub behind. “I need to know if a succubus named Heather came to you, and if so, where I can find her.” I had bigger questions too, about the Hunters maybe being involved in taking Wilds, but I had a feeling this woman wasn’t the one to ask. Her answer to the easier questions would tell me.

  “You look like you could use some rest,” Gabrielle offered, evading my questions with the ease of a politician.

  Definitely not the one to ask. Fine. I could play games too, but not while running on empty. I ignored her and made my way toward the one building on the island. Gabrielle couldn’t be the only mermaid holding the answers to my questions.

  There were no paved walkways outside the mermaids’ home. No lounge chairs or outdoor fire pits. Not even a potted plant.

  “We don’t want our residence to be noticed from the sky,” she explained as though she knew my thoughts.

  “Do mermaids read minds?” I asked. Succubi could read energy, so why not?

  “No.” She laughed. “You’re so tired, I think your poker face fell asleep hours ago.”

  Great. My poker face. I needed that.

  Mirrored glass made up the exterior of Gabrielle’s home. Other than seeing my own and Gabrielle’s reflection, it looked as though the short green bushes and flat land went on for another few miles. But in reality the house stood only ten feet in front of us, built on the edge of a cliff.

  “The roof is a living roof. It’s more dirt and grass and bushes. Keeps us hidden,” Gabrielle said as she led the way around the side of the house and walked through a floor-to-ceiling opening.

  From the outside of the mermaid home, I would have never expected the opulence on the inside. Mermaids lived in excess. It was probably all those treasure ships their foremothers attacked. On a floor-to-ceiling glass shelf sat rows of books. On the middle shelf, in place of books sat a large silver gem-encrusted Faberge egg and a golden crown filled with triangles and circles and crosses.

  Early afternoon light streamed in through the windows and lit up the large living room, despite the black granite floor tiles. Everything looked bright, shiny, and new. Two overstuffed white couches beckoned to me, both equally sleep worthy.

  “Let me get you a resting tincture,” Gabrielle offered. “Some of my sisters are masters with herbal remedies.”

  “No, thank you,” I said before a yawn. So far, everything Gabrielle said rang true to me. It was the tidbits she’d refused to say that left me concerned. No way was I trusting her to give me a sleeping tincture.

  “Can I get you a drink, then?” she asked.

  A capped bottle of something would ensure it hadn’t been tampered with. “Yeah, do you have any wine or beer?”

  “I do. Wait here a moment.” Gabrielle’s bare feet padded out of the room to what I assumed was the kitchen.

  I stretched my hearing to listen to her movement and realized my mistake. If she uncorked and poured the wine in the kitchen she’d still have time to sneak something into my glass. Call me paranoid, but recent experiences had made me wary.

  I listened as she opened the fridge. Glass bottles dinged as she moved them to pull one out. But something else caught my audible attention, not in the kitchen but down the long hallway that led off the living room. A female’s moaning…combined with a man’s.

  My coterie didn’t bring men to our home for many reasons. We only sought sexual pleasure with humans (never an ongoing romantic relationship) and, when it was time, a mating partner for procreation. Our home was the only place we could truly be ourselves. The presence of a human would ruin that.

  The giggling of two females further down the hall pulled me from my thoughts. I missed my sister.

  “How many mermaids live here?” I asked as Gabrielle entered the room with a bottle of beer in hand. She offered it to me and I popped the metal top off. It resisted sufficiently for me to believe she hadn’t tampered with it.

  I took a swig of hoppy liquid as she answered. “Many. This home is much larger than it appears to be from the outside. Optical illusion with the mirrors. We have twenty rooms and in some rooms, more than one sister resides. More than a few are couples, life partners, mates.”

  “Where are the others?” I had hoped to run across someone else who could give me a little more than island history and a house tour.

  “Let me show you to your room.” Gabrielle walked down the hallway.

  “My room?”
r />   When she didn’t respond I figured it couldn’t hurt to see what she meant.

  Black granite with specks of silver, the same as the living room floor, covered the walls. The hallway ended in floor-to-ceiling glass looking out over the water. Etched within the glass, nearly from floor to ceiling, was their goddess, Atargatis. A flowing veil draped over the top of her head and reached the bottom of the window. The right side of the veil gathered slightly around a knee whereas the left side opened to expose a fish tail. Her torso appeared fully human in its nakedness.

  Gabrielle opened the door to the right of us and invited me to enter a bedroom. A white king size four-poster bed with a white comforter and white pillows took up a large portion of the room. White night stands stood on each side of the bed and a white wooden dresser sat against the wall shared with the next room over. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the overwhelming amount of white. Two outside bedroom walls of glass offered up a breathtaking view of the sandy beach and gently rolling ocean beyond.

  I sat my boots and socks on the floor near the bed and walked to the windowed wall to get a better look.

  Gabrielle opened a door near the dresser. “Here’s your bathroom. You share it with the room next door, Elaine and Sarah. There’s a lock from the inside of the doors for privacy. Make sure to unlock it when you’re finished using the facilities. There are towels under the sink and we have no set meal times, so enjoy a shower, a nap, your beer, and we’ll see you when we see you.”

  “Wait.” I caught her arm before she left the room. She didn’t seem to mind my touch. “I’m not staying. I’m not here to join your cause or your army or whatever, despite what your wise woman said. I just need some information and I’ll be on my way.”

  Gabrielle gave a loaded smile. “Where will you go once you leave our island? Once you’ve gotten what you came for?”

  “Depends on what I learn here,” I said. Hopefully my next stop was wherever Shawna was.

  “What the mermaids tell you? What I tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then believe me when I say, if you don’t rest up for the next part of our journey, you’ll be kicking yourself and cursing me. Your strength and performance are critical.” She gently pulled her forearm out from under my hand.

  “Our journey? How’s that?”

  “All questions will be answered when my sisters are present,” she said, turning away from me. Gabrielle’s butt cheeks and long hair swayed from the room before the door shut behind her.

  I could have knocked her out of the way and bolted down the hall, out of the house to freedom. But then where would I go? Swim to the Californian coast? Not on my life. Let’s just say the movie Jaws caused enough damage to keep me from ever wanting to splash around in the ocean which, being huldra, hadn’t been a life goal of mine in the first place. Besides, I wasn’t going anywhere until I found out something that helped me find Shawna.

  I peered around the room, but my eyes wandered to the ocean view in search of the triangular top fin of a great white. I took another sip of beer. It was as though I was in an alternate dimension where the goddess never died. Where my mother’s stories were more than just wishful mutterings or whispered ancient history. I felt along my neck for my Freyja charm and grasped it in my fingers.

  “Thank you, goddess,” I murmured, for keeping me alive so far. “Please do the same for Shawna.” I’d survived an energy-wielding succubi den and a three-hour boat ride in the Pacific Ocean. Now, I sat in the bedroom of a mermaid home with a beer in one hand and the emblem of my goddess in the other. But what was any of that compared to what she was going through? I couldn’t even imagine. And that was the problem. I didn’t know who took her, why, or what they might be doing to her.

  Going through this all over again was too much. I felt like I might explode at any moment.

  Yes, I appeared to be safe, but much like the mirrored siding of the mermaids’ home, appearances only represent what others want you to see. Not necessarily what’s hiding beneath the surface. Gabrielle hadn’t been as trusting as she’d let on. She’d placed me in the room farthest from the front door. Trapped, in essence. If at least one mermaid lived behind each of the many bedroom doors lining the hallway between my room and the entry way, I’d have a lot of scaly bodies to fight before reaching fresh air. Mermaids were tactical, that much was obvious. I wondered how many watched from the water and cliffs as Gabrielle and I walked to their home.

  After locking the bedroom door, I pulled my cell phone from my jacket pocket, but it had no signal. I grabbed my charger from my purse and plugged it into an outlet in the wall anyway.

  Being told what to do wasn’t on my list of all-time favorites, but I figured taking advantage of the bed and bathroom wasn’t a terrible idea. I stared at the bed, and then at the bathroom. Go to sleep or take a shower? I needed both as badly as an evergreen needs rain. I decided to side with the tree and get me some rain—first a shower, then a nap.

  I’d fallen asleep to the music of ocean waves slamming against rocky cliffs and woke up gloriously well rested. It wasn’t as amazing as falling asleep to the sound of the breeze flowing through leaves and rain filtering through branches and plunking my roof, but it came in at a close second. And I hadn’t slept that good since Shawna’s disappearance. I had a feeling the beer I’d downed had a lot to do with that.

  I sat up and stretched. As usual, I’d kicked every bedcover, other than the sheet, to the floor. I had to pee so I pulled myself from bed and sauntered sleepily into the bathroom. The outer wall was glass, mirrored on the outside. Both inner walls and the floor were black granite. The granite counter held a large white shell on top as the sink. Well, at least that part fit the mermaid stereotype.

  As I lathered the sea salt cleansing bar in my hands, I twisted my torso to study myself. Dark russet bark covered the small of my back. It was a sight of beauty that brought with it the certainty of suffering.

  A sound registered at the outskirts of my mind, but didn’t tear me away from my reflection. At least not until a mermaid stood in the opening from our shared bathroom to her bedroom.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, the door wasn’t locked so I didn’t realize. I mean, I heard the water running, but that room’s been empty for so long I figured the sound came from another bathroom.” The red-haired female had strangely tan skin and wore only a shell necklace. She didn’t turn around and leave. She didn’t come in. She only stood there.

  I peeked over her shoulder where another female lay naked on the bed, reading a book. She looked up from the pages and made eye contact with me. I half expected them to be like the succubi and invite me to join their mattress dance later, but they only stared.

  “I’ve never seen an actual tree woman before,” the redhead said, ogling my bark. “I’m Sarah, by the way, and that’s my mate, Elaine.” She pointed to the female on the bed.

  I hated that my first reaction was to turn and hide my lower back from her, hide it from the world.

  “I want to see her back,” exclaimed the brunette female, Elaine. She leapt from the bed to stand beside her partner.

  I finished rinsing my hands and turned the faucet off. I considered their request for a quick moment before showing the two Wild strangers my back, the part of me that I loved a little more every day. The part of me that was going to sign my death warrant with the Hunters.

  “Can I touch it?” Elaine asked. She gently pushed Sarah’s hips aside so she could get through.

  “Will you let me feel your scales?” I asked in response. I didn’t expect her to say yes.

  “Of course.” She inhaled sharply and as she exhaled a smile pulled at her lips. Gold and light blue scales rose across her collarbone and trickled down her breasts, stomach, arms, and legs.

  “It doesn’t cover your face,” I said. “Mine doesn’t either.”

  Elaine reached out to run a finger over my back. I fought the urge to pull away. I willed bark façade to the surface of my shoulders, across
my chest and down the rest of my skin. She jumped and laughed. “Didn’t expect that to happen.”

  “It’s new to me,” I said. “Sometimes it pops up right away. Other times, not so much.”

  I peered at myself in the mirror. I’d never seen my reflection in this state. My skin echoed the tree I connected to the most: an evergreen. Pride filled my heart and threatened to burst it wide open.

  Elaine touched my arm and glided her scaled knuckles over my bark. “It’s rougher at your lower back than your arm,” she said.

  “That’s because my back is actual bark and this is only façade.” I reached out to glide my fingers along her blue scales. They weren’t slimy like I’d assumed they’d be. “They’re so soft,” I remarked.

  “Faline.” Gabrielle knocked on the bedroom door and the three of us jumped. “If you’re ready, my sisters are gathered to hear what you’ve come to speak to us about.”

  Her words reminded me of the wise woman and the war I was supposed to start. In a snap my bark façade melted into my skin and I stood in the bathroom in only black panties and a patch of bark on my back, beside a blue scaled brunette and a naked red head. Only in Wilds land.

  “Can you let Gabrielle know that Elaine and I will be out in a few minutes?” Sarah asked.

  I nodded and left the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I pulled on my jeans and black cami. I grabbed a dagger from one of the boots and carefully slid it through my jean’s belt loop near my lower spine. So what if they caught a glimpse of my weapon. I’d be dumb not to bring it. I had to stay alive for Shawna. I didn’t know these mermaids, or really, any mermaids.

  I left the room and made my way down the long hallway toward Gabrielle. She wore a flowing linen halter top dress.

  “They’re waiting down by the water,” she said as I neared her.

  From the house we took a steep path down a rocky cliff. Salt water slammed into the side and sprayed toward us. “How many are waiting?” I asked.